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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your perspective or evoke some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the extended entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|